An odd mixture of writing, book loving, history and the occult.

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ROW80 Check-In 05/02/2012

Quite a successful week. Have done another eight pages of Emily Swann! Am damn pleased about that! Read two poems, blogged and kept diary every day. Those things have become close to being almost automatic now which is good. The reading is a little better than last week but not as far advanced as I would like. Did completely forget to do the 750 words things! But looked over Emily Swann the other day and noticed that it is still pretty much devoid of description. It’s no wonder it’s so short! I find it really hard to do descriptive scenes. So I never describe rooms or furniture or what people look like. The whole thing is just taking place in a vacuum! It is too much like hard work to fix that now so I’m going to wait until I’ve finished the second draft, print it all off and then either hand write or type all the description in.

I have no idea if it will work but, as I’m sure you know, there’s such a difference between hand writing and typing. Hand writing always feels more physical and engaging somehow whereas, to my mind, typing creates distance. When I write the description I try to imagine myself actually in the place looking at what the characters are seeing and to do that you need to be very engaged with the story or maybe that’s just me.

Yay on the Emily progress. When it comes to the descriptions, I tend to go the other way, spending too much time on them. I think it may be easier to correct your way. If nothing else, it always feels better to add while editing than striking out words. That always hurts a tiny bit.

I always tend to err on the terse side. I found at university with my essays that at times I struggled to write enough to make the word count. And sometimes I think too much description can be a bit boring! (No offence.)

Congrats on your progress! Even I struggle with descriptions. I usually put them in during the edits/rewrites. Sometimes I wonder if they’re really necessary because some readers may get bored with them. I know when I read a novel and the author goes deep into descriptions, I get bored and skip those parts. So, I guess one has to be careful.

Yes, I worry that too much description slows down the plot! And I think that some writers just stick it in to up the word count; I despise padding! I only put words in for a reason, I’m very strict with myself over that because when I read I get bored quickly and skim a lot but I hate the thought of people doing that to my work which I why I try to make the plot as exciting as possible!